How to Use Twitter to Promote Webinars

If e-mail is the undisputed invitation champion, then Twitter reigns supreme when it comes to staying in touch. You can also use it for webinar invitations. Rock stars, actors, journalists, and companies all enjoy communicating with the world via the 140-character message. It’s short, sweet, and often acts as the shot heard around the world.

If you’re not sure about that one, just do a Google search of scandals involving comments posted by professional athletes and politicians. The positive side of that is Twitter’s incredible potential. In the business realm, Twitter is a popular marketing channel with both business-to-business marketers as well as those that go direct-to-consumer.

Twitter lets you send short messages — no more than 140 characters — to people who follow you. In most cases, someone can follow you just by clicking the Follow button on your profile summary. They can also see your profile while they’re searching for a topic. Some users manually approve their followers, but for business, that’s a silly extra step.

Your 140-character messages can also include a link to a website or blog post, as well as a video or a picture. (And no, in this case, a picture doesn’t count as 1,000 words.)

People can not only read your tweets, but they can also reply, retweet (sharing your message by tweeting your tweet to their followers), or favorite it. (Favoriting lets your followers know they like your tweet. Tweets that you favorite are also collected in a special tab of your profile.)

Here’s a look at some Twitter lingo:

Tweet: The act of sending a 140-character message via Twitter, with or without photos, video, or a link. Or, such a message sent via Twitter.

Retweet: Sharing a message originally from another person with your followers.

Favorite: A method of letting followers approve of your tweet by designating it a favorite.

At (@) sign: The symbol that precedes all Twitter handles. When you add the full Twitter handle to any tweet, everyone who follows that person will see the tweet. This differs from a hashtag, which can be seen by anyone searching for that topic.

Hashtag: A spaceless summary of a tweet that is preceded by the pound sign (#). A hashtag acts as label for a topic and allows other users to find content by searching for that hashtag. Adding a hashtag allows the tweet to be seen by more people than when using the at sign because that only is seen by people who follow that handle.

Verified: An official designation provided by Twitter that helps users verify the authenticity of accounts for businesses and public figures. It’s denoted by a blue check mark.

Trending: The description of a phrase or topic that grows at a fast rate. For example, a major news event or a comment from a public figure can “trend” if lots of people are mentioning it or retweeting about it all at once.

Now that you have a lay of the land, here are some things to consider when tweeting about your webinar:

Tweet away: Tweets don’t build up in the user’s inbox, so feel free to tweet as much as you feel is necessary. Start with the occasional tweet a few weeks before your webinar and tweet more heavily as time draws near.

Ask followers to retweet: Industry colleagues, partners, and friends can extend the life and reach of a tweet.

Use a hashtag: In addition to using the obligatory #webinar hashtag (that finds all webinars in a user search), feel free to use one that describes your webinar. For example, if your webinar is about designing effective blogs, use something like #blogdesign, or even the webinar name, if it fits.